Free or Paid, Rates of Google Play Store Users

Background

Users download apps for various usage purposes. Given that paid service is usually better at offering pleasant experience, and that free apps are more accesible to everyone, what are the user opinions towards these apps?

More specifically, the following questions are of interest:

  • How do the app ratings differ between paid and free apps in general?
  • How are the differences distributed across different app categories?
  • Are there any categories where the differences are statistically significant?

To expore answers to the above questions, I narrawed the context to Google Play Store and conducted data analysis on the Kaggle dataset Google Play Store,

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Google Play Store and Lavanya Gupta for offering the wonderful dataset.

In [1]:
In [2]:
Out[2]:
App Category Rating Reviews Size Installs Type Price Content Rating Genres Last Updated Current Ver Android Ver
0 Photo Editor & Candy Camera & Grid & ScrapBook ART_AND_DESIGN 4.1 159 19M 10,000+ Free 0 Everyone Art & Design January 7, 2018 1.0.0 4.0.3 and up
1 Coloring book moana ART_AND_DESIGN 3.9 967 14M 500,000+ Free 0 Everyone Art & Design;Pretend Play January 15, 2018 2.0.0 4.0.3 and up
2 U Launcher Lite – FREE Live Cool Themes, Hide ... ART_AND_DESIGN 4.7 87510 8.7M 5,000,000+ Free 0 Everyone Art & Design August 1, 2018 1.2.4 4.0.3 and up
3 Sketch - Draw & Paint ART_AND_DESIGN 4.5 215644 25M 50,000,000+ Free 0 Teen Art & Design June 8, 2018 Varies with device 4.2 and up
4 Pixel Draw - Number Art Coloring Book ART_AND_DESIGN 4.3 967 2.8M 100,000+ Free 0 Everyone Art & Design;Creativity June 20, 2018 1.1 4.4 and up
In [3]:
Out[3]:
(10841, 13)
In [4]:
Out[4]:
Index(['App', 'Category', 'Rating', 'Reviews', 'Size', 'Installs', 'Type',
       'Price', 'Content Rating', 'Genres', 'Last Updated', 'Current Ver',
       'Android Ver'],
      dtype='object')
In [5]:
Out[5]:
<bound method NDFrame.describe of                                                      App             Category  \
0         Photo Editor & Candy Camera & Grid & ScrapBook       ART_AND_DESIGN   
1                                    Coloring book moana       ART_AND_DESIGN   
2      U Launcher Lite – FREE Live Cool Themes, Hide ...       ART_AND_DESIGN   
3                                  Sketch - Draw & Paint       ART_AND_DESIGN   
4                  Pixel Draw - Number Art Coloring Book       ART_AND_DESIGN   
...                                                  ...                  ...   
10836                                   Sya9a Maroc - FR               FAMILY   
10837                   Fr. Mike Schmitz Audio Teachings               FAMILY   
10838                             Parkinson Exercices FR              MEDICAL   
10839                      The SCP Foundation DB fr nn5n  BOOKS_AND_REFERENCE   
10840      iHoroscope - 2018 Daily Horoscope & Astrology            LIFESTYLE   

       Rating Reviews                Size     Installs  Type Price  \
0         4.1     159                 19M      10,000+  Free     0   
1         3.9     967                 14M     500,000+  Free     0   
2         4.7   87510                8.7M   5,000,000+  Free     0   
3         4.5  215644                 25M  50,000,000+  Free     0   
4         4.3     967                2.8M     100,000+  Free     0   
...       ...     ...                 ...          ...   ...   ...   
10836     4.5      38                 53M       5,000+  Free     0   
10837     5.0       4                3.6M         100+  Free     0   
10838     NaN       3                9.5M       1,000+  Free     0   
10839     4.5     114  Varies with device       1,000+  Free     0   
10840     4.5  398307                 19M  10,000,000+  Free     0   

      Content Rating                     Genres      Last Updated  \
0           Everyone               Art & Design   January 7, 2018   
1           Everyone  Art & Design;Pretend Play  January 15, 2018   
2           Everyone               Art & Design    August 1, 2018   
3               Teen               Art & Design      June 8, 2018   
4           Everyone    Art & Design;Creativity     June 20, 2018   
...              ...                        ...               ...   
10836       Everyone                  Education     July 25, 2017   
10837       Everyone                  Education      July 6, 2018   
10838       Everyone                    Medical  January 20, 2017   
10839     Mature 17+          Books & Reference  January 19, 2015   
10840       Everyone                  Lifestyle     July 25, 2018   

              Current Ver         Android Ver  
0                   1.0.0        4.0.3 and up  
1                   2.0.0        4.0.3 and up  
2                   1.2.4        4.0.3 and up  
3      Varies with device          4.2 and up  
4                     1.1          4.4 and up  
...                   ...                 ...  
10836                1.48          4.1 and up  
10837                 1.0          4.1 and up  
10838                 1.0          2.2 and up  
10839  Varies with device  Varies with device  
10840  Varies with device  Varies with device  

[10841 rows x 13 columns]>
In [6]:
Out[6]:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x170b4f6edd8>
In [7]:
Out[7]:
array([[<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot object at 0x00000170B70587B8>]],
      dtype=object)
In [8]:
<class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
RangeIndex: 10841 entries, 0 to 10840
Data columns (total 13 columns):
 #   Column          Non-Null Count  Dtype  
---  ------          --------------  -----  
 0   App             10841 non-null  object 
 1   Category        10841 non-null  object 
 2   Rating          9367 non-null   float64
 3   Reviews         10841 non-null  object 
 4   Size            10841 non-null  object 
 5   Installs        10841 non-null  object 
 6   Type            10840 non-null  object 
 7   Price           10841 non-null  object 
 8   Content Rating  10840 non-null  object 
 9   Genres          10841 non-null  object 
 10  Last Updated    10841 non-null  object 
 11  Current Ver     10833 non-null  object 
 12  Android Ver     10838 non-null  object 
dtypes: float64(1), object(12)
memory usage: 1.1+ MB
In [9]:
Out[9]:
App Category Rating Reviews Size Installs Type Price Content Rating Genres Last Updated Current Ver Android Ver
0 False False False False False False False False False False False False False
1 False False False False False False False False False False False False False
2 False False False False False False False False False False False False False
3 False False False False False False False False False False False False False
4 False False False False False False False False False False False False False
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
10836 False False False False False False False False False False False False False
10837 False False False False False False False False False False False False False
10838 False False True False False False False False False False False False False
10839 False False False False False False False False False False False False False
10840 False False False False False False False False False False False False False

10841 rows × 13 columns

In [10]:
Out[10]:
App                  0
Category             0
Rating            1474
Reviews              0
Size                 0
Installs             0
Type                 1
Price                0
Content Rating       1
Genres               0
Last Updated         0
Current Ver          8
Android Ver          3
dtype: int64
In [11]:
Out[11]:
App Category Rating Reviews Size Installs Type Price Content Rating Genres Last Updated Current Ver Android Ver
10472 Life Made WI-Fi Touchscreen Photo Frame 1.9 19.0 3.0M 1,000+ Free 0 Everyone NaN February 11, 2018 1.0.19 4.0 and up NaN
In [12]:
In [13]:
Out[13]:
App Category Rating Reviews Size Installs Type Price Content Rating Genres Last Updated Current Ver Android Ver
10470 Jazz Wi-Fi COMMUNICATION 3.4 49 4.0M 10,000+ Free 0 Everyone Communication February 10, 2017 0.1 2.3 and up
10471 Xposed Wi-Fi-Pwd PERSONALIZATION 3.5 1042 404k 100,000+ Free 0 Everyone Personalization August 5, 2014 3.0.0 4.0.3 and up
10473 osmino Wi-Fi: free WiFi TOOLS 4.2 134203 4.1M 10,000,000+ Free 0 Everyone Tools August 7, 2018 6.06.14 4.4 and up
10474 Sat-Fi Voice COMMUNICATION 3.4 37 14M 1,000+ Free 0 Everyone Communication November 21, 2014 2.2.1.5 2.2 and up
10475 Wi-Fi Visualizer TOOLS 3.9 132 2.6M 50,000+ Free 0 Everyone Tools May 17, 2017 0.0.9 2.3 and up
In [14]:
Out[14]:
<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x170b70f72e8>
In [15]:
Out[15]:
array([[<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot object at 0x00000170B717E5F8>]],
      dtype=object)
In [ ]:

Step 0. Explore and Prepare Dataframe

In [16]:
There are 1181/10840 duplicated records.
9659 records after dropping duplicated.
In [17]:
{nan, 'Free', 'Paid'}
Dropping alien Type value '0', 0 record(s) removed
In [18]:
NaA value statistics in each column
App                  0
Category             0
Rating            1463
Reviews              0
Size                 0
Installs             0
Type                 1
Price                0
Content Rating       0
Genres               0
Last Updated         0
Current Ver          8
Android Ver          2
dtype: int64 

Column 'Type' with NaN values are dropped, 9658 records left.
Cleaned dataframe for 'Rating' has 8196 records.
In [19]:
In [20]:
In [21]:
Out[21]:
Rating
count 8196.000000
mean 4.173243
std 0.536625
min 1.000000
25% 4.000000
50% 4.300000
75% 4.500000
max 5.000000
In [22]:
There are 7592 free and 604 paid apps in the the Rating dataframe 
In [23]:
In [24]:
Deleted categories: ['BUSINESS', 'NEWS_AND_MAGAZINES', 'SOCIAL', 'TRAVEL_AND_LOCAL', 'SHOPPING', 'BOOKS_AND_REFERENCE', 'VIDEO_PLAYERS', 'DATING', 'MAPS_AND_NAVIGATION', 'EDUCATION', 'ENTERTAINMENT', 'FOOD_AND_DRINK', 'AUTO_AND_VEHICLES', 'WEATHER', 'LIBRARIES_AND_DEMO', 'HOUSE_AND_HOME', 'ART_AND_DESIGN', 'COMICS', 'PARENTING', 'EVENTS', 'BEAUTY']
Cleaned Rating dataframe has 5753 datapoints
In [25]:
Out[25]:
Rating
count 5753.000000
mean 4.173197
std 0.544844
min 1.000000
25% 4.000000
50% 4.300000
75% 4.500000
max 5.000000

Q 1. How does the ratings differ in general?

In [26]:
In [27]:
Free app has average Rating 4.163495108382891
Paid app has average Rating 4.266851851851849
Mean rating: 4.17319659308187

Interpretation

In general, Free apps, with an average rating of 4.16, are lower rated than Paid apps with an average rating of 4.27. Note that the average rating for all apps is 4.17, so Free apps are rated below average, while Paid apps are rated reletively higher than the average score.

Q2 How are the differences distributed across different app categories?

In [28]:
In [29]:
Out[29]:
Category
COMMUNICATION        -0.063287
FAMILY                0.115128
FINANCE              -0.297604
GAME                  0.136364
HEALTH_AND_FITNESS    0.154858
LIFESTYLE             0.166608
MEDICAL               0.087344
PERSONALIZATION       0.147692
PHOTOGRAPHY          -0.152796
PRODUCTIVITY          0.023577
SPORTS                0.041940
TOOLS                 0.142818
Name: Rating, dtype: float64

Interpretation

Although paid apps are in general more highly-rated than free apps, and so are in most app categories, there are still some app categories where free apps are likely to be favored more than the paid apps. For instance, COMMUNICATION, FINANCE and PHOTOGRAPHY are three such categories. In FINANCE category, the free apps on average are rated almost 0.3 higher than the paid apps, which is also the largest difference between app types across all the categories.

Q3 Are there any categories where the differences are statistically significant?

In [30]:
General utest result: pval 4.17841444099998e-10, u 1182741.0
Out[30]:
Category u_statistics p_value
0 TOOLS 16327.0 0.003025
2 GAME 24001.0 0.000191
3 FAMILY 90258.0 0.000036
9 PERSONALIZATION 5845.5 0.002357
In [32]:
In [33]:
FAMILY18.2%GAME10.6%TOOLS7.78%MEDICAL4.27%BUSINESS4.24%PRODUCTIVITY3.91%PERSONALIZATION3.62%COMMUNICATION3.57%SPORTS3.54%LIFESTYLE3.52%FINANCE3.38%HEALTH_AND_FITNESS3.15%PHOTOGRAPHY3.09%SOCIAL2.72%NEWS_AND_MAGAZINES2.61%SHOPPING2.4%TRAVEL_AND_LOCAL2.38%DATING2.16%BOOKS_AND_REFERENCE2.13%VIDEO_PLAYERS1.61%EDUCATION1.44%ENTERTAINMENT1.37%MAPS_AND_NAVIGATION1.26%FOOD_AND_DRINK1.17%HOUSE_AND_HOME0.812%LIBRARIES_AND_DEMO0.784%AUTO_AND_VEHICLES0.784%WEATHER0.756%ART_AND_DESIGN0.6%EVENTS0.59%COMICS0.554%PARENTING0.554%BEAUTY0.489%
FAMILYGAMETOOLSMEDICALBUSINESSPRODUCTIVITYPERSONALIZATIONCOMMUNICATIONSPORTSLIFESTYLEFINANCEHEALTH_AND_FITNESSPHOTOGRAPHYSOCIALNEWS_AND_MAGAZINESSHOPPINGTRAVEL_AND_LOCALDATINGBOOKS_AND_REFERENCEVIDEO_PLAYERSEDUCATIONENTERTAINMENTMAPS_AND_NAVIGATIONFOOD_AND_DRINKHOUSE_AND_HOMELIBRARIES_AND_DEMOAUTO_AND_VEHICLESWEATHERART_AND_DESIGNEVENTSCOMICSPARENTINGBEAUTYPies chart show application categories.

From all application, 18% typed by Family then follow by Game (10.6%) and Tools (7.78%) Apps in google play store not sute for do business but for entertainment

Categories and Rating

In [34]:

Any of categories have the high rating from customer which more than 4 except Dating apps.

In [35]:

Every category got rating in range 3-5 point but from the plot show people quite unlike Finance, Lifestyle, and Tools applications

Types of installing application

In [36]:

Type of application are free for 92.6% and 7.38% have to pays for use.

Data Preprocessing

In [37]:
Out[37]:
App Category Rating Reviews Size Installs Type Price Content Rating Genres Last Updated Current Ver Android Ver
0 Photo Editor & Candy Camera & Grid & ScrapBook ART_AND_DESIGN 4.1 159 19M 10,000+ Free 0 Everyone Art & Design January 7, 2018 1.0.0 4.0.3 and up
1 Coloring book moana ART_AND_DESIGN 3.9 967 14M 500,000+ Free 0 Everyone Art & Design;Pretend Play January 15, 2018 2.0.0 4.0.3 and up
2 U Launcher Lite – FREE Live Cool Themes, Hide ... ART_AND_DESIGN 4.7 87510 8.7M 5,000,000+ Free 0 Everyone Art & Design August 1, 2018 1.2.4 4.0.3 and up
3 Sketch - Draw & Paint ART_AND_DESIGN 4.5 215644 25M 50,000,000+ Free 0 Teen Art & Design June 8, 2018 Varies with device 4.2 and up
4 Pixel Draw - Number Art Coloring Book ART_AND_DESIGN 4.3 967 2.8M 100,000+ Free 0 Everyone Art & Design;Creativity June 20, 2018 1.1 4.4 and up

Change all of catagory data to ordinal

In [39]:
Out[39]:
App Category Rating Reviews Size Installs Type Price Content Rating Genres Last Updated Current Ver Android Ver
0 5805 0 29 1180 47 5 0 72 1 9 526 107 14
1 2134 0 27 5912 24 17 0 72 1 11 449 952 14
2 7321 0 35 5669 333 12 0 72 1 9 106 424 14
3 6572 0 33 1943 87 15 0 72 4 9 777 2582 17
4 5860 0 31 5912 56 8 0 72 1 10 711 250 19

K-Means Modelling

In [40]:
In [41]:

Interpretation

As rating is not normally-distributed, Mann-Whitney's U test was applied to test the significance of rating differences, since this test is free from a normal assumption. At the 0.05 significance level, results of the u tests on different categories demonstrate that the free and paid apps in the following categories have significant rating differences: personalization, tools, family and games. Paid apps are on average higher rated than free apps in these categories.

Concluding Remarks

Data analysis was conducted on the Kaggle Google Play Store dataset, the answers to the three questions were explored:

  • How do the ratings differ between paid and free apps in general? In general, Paid apps are better-rated than free apps, which appears to support the argument that service quility of the paid apps is better.
  • How are the differences distributed across different app categories? In most categories, Paid apps achieve higher ratings than free apps, however, in a few categories such as COMMUNICATION, FINANCE and PHOTOGRAPHY, the average ratings of free apps are higher than those of paid apps. Is this because many popular apps in these categories are free, like facebook and whatsapp in the COMMUNICATION category?
  • Are there any categories where the differences are statistically significant? There are four categories (PERSONALIZATION, TOOLS, FAMILY and GAME) where paid apps are rated significantly higher than free apps.

This is only a very superficial exploration of the Google Play Store dataset. There are many other useful information including installation counts and app review texts, which might entail many more interesting facts and await further exploration.

In [ ]: